Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32752 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Customer Reviews

the best book in the world
how anyone give Beckett's trilogy 1 star is beyond the limits of comprehension. It is my favourite book (especially the last installment, The Unnamable), and is absolutely mind-blowing.
It seems that both reviewers who find it unsatisfactory do so because of a gross misconception: that beckett's intention is to describe geriatric decline, or psychosis (indeed, the narrators are as far from archetypes as it is possible to be). This is simply not the case, and cruelly pigeonholes and misunderstands a work which concerns itself, really, with EVERYTHING. (oh, and if he were detailing his madness, as one reviewer seems to think, it would merely support the link between madness and genius!) As the reader progresses, all their assumptions about narrators, truth and the process of reading are undercut. reality and imagined scenarios blur, power relationships are confused...
i hope i am not making it seem grandiose or laborious (although you could never call it light reading). the texts appear aimless and digressive, but through their nothingness they challenge and inspire. maybe it's paradoxical, but through challenging all the devices of the novel form - ie plot, character, narrative - beckett creates one of the richest works i have ever read.
if this sounds too philosophical, don't be perturbed - the thing people tend to forget about Beckett is that he's actually really funny, in his sly way. i laughed out loud numerous times while reading the book. But most of all, Beckett's prose is simply beautiful. the imagining of his characters - who are delightfully idiosyncratic - are so vivid, elegiac and evocative.
So: mind-altering, funny, beautiful, and entirely unique. Sammy B, total legend. no wonder he won the nobel prize.

Devastating poetry-in prose
Beckett, in these three novels, gives us a terrifying and hilarious masterclass in written English. Absolutely beautiful, quite indescribable poetry-in-prose. Must be read, with full attention, to be appreciated.

The greatest writer of the twentieth century
These three novels are the best of the 20th century.

They contain all the beauty, despair, and spareness that makes Beckett the patron writer of our century. They get at the core of what it means to be a self in the midst of the void, having, against one's will, a self's attendant thoughts, words, stories, and imagination. "I, say I. Unbelieving" says Beckett in the first line of The Unnamable, and you can believe him. These novels are as metaphysical as novels get, asking sincerely what it means to be. And asking just as sincerely if language can ever help us figure that out.

Each novel, with Molloy on his crutches, Malone in his death-bed, The Unnamable in his skull, is screamingly funny and cryingly horrible. Beckett's sense of the absurd and the ridiculous are only matched by his encyclopedic knowledge and overwhelming but strangely life-affirming pessimism, which helps us go on as we laugh at the world's collection of whimsies.

There are no novels better. There are few funnier. There are none containing more truth.